Strings and Silence
by Plasticframed Paintings
Summary: When things are best left unsaid.


"You're going to wear your fingers raw at this rate."

"They say practise makes perfect, don't they?"

Work-worn fingers continued to pluck their way over the silver strings, both well-accquainted with each other by that point.  
The bars, the chords; they all came so naturally that warmbrown eyes were able to move away from them and meet familiar green without missing a beat in the song he was playing.

Yoh was almost as religious about playing on his accoustic guitar as Lyserg was about reading half-way through a new book on the day he bought it - each a special brand of obsessive compulsive disorder, neither caring much about it.

The soft notes continued floating even as the shorter moved over the five-foot span between door and bed, the carpet underfoot muffling his sock-covered feet even further. The bed dipped a bit under new weight, and Yoh leaned just that much closer to the left. Their shoulders touched and the music went on.

"What're you playing, anyway?"

Silence was the only answer outside of the harmonic ups and downs of guitar strings, echoing around the fairly empty room. Like eyes being led by something colourful, his own played ping-pong with the four walls that were so closely spaced together, waiting for his answer.

The apartment room was still barren as always. Nothing adorned the plain-white walls but a few posters of singers he had never heard of and probably wouldn't like. A calender was pinned to the corner closest the sole window, hanging crooked like it wanted to jump through and hopefully find a better place waiting for it in the grass below.

The garden itself was nothing special, save the days he'd spent lounging about on it with Yoh, together with their books and guitar, their bottles and popsicle sticks and memories. Warm sun would soothe their backs and cover the tops of their heads and Yoh would play and play until his fingers ached so badly that he'd need to bandage them. They went through at least three boxes a week.

The song itself was never the same, not once.

And he always asked the same question after the first notes were keyed out.

If he was lucky, the familiar, rituatlistic 'what are you playing?' would recieve some form of answer. Sometimes a nod, a gesture. Sometimes words, though they were never too specific.

More often than not, Yoh preferred to let his music do the talking for him, as Lyserg had figured out long ago. Neither of them minded the questioning.

They both liked their special brand of obsessive compulsive, after all.

Yoh paused once in A minor, shifting just barely and in such a natural way that it was only too obvious he was used to having the other place his chin on his shoulder in the midst of things. Lyserg stared at the thin wire now in front of his face, watching deft fingers resume and continue painting the air.

He wished sometimes that he could play that well.

His fingers were too cut out for flipping pages in books and turning over sheets with case notes on them, not at all musically inclined in the way the Asakura's had been.

Sometimes he would come home and wander through the empty apartment, wondering which tree Yoh had wandered off to nap under that day. He would find the old guitar leaning up against a tower of his papers that would be untouched for the remainder of the day. He would pick up the mass of wood and plastic and metal, strum the chords, let the nonsense loose in the air.

He would apologise to the walls for having to listen to such a horrible follow up act.

But the walls seemed quite content now, and Lyserg felt the same with his head resting against something so sturdy, surrounded by the prettysoft, loudconfusing music. What was it called again? What had he been playing?

"What're you playing, Yoh?"

They did this same dance every day in the same room, same sunlight or same rain viewable through the same window.

Unchanging.

Cement predictability was what they specialised in, and neither of them would have it any other way. 


End file.
